Trial of the Green Witch

January 4, 2020

Starting mid-December 2019, we started getting reports messages from viewers having trouble watching The Burning of the Green Witch, part of our lecture series The Satanic Soap Box. It caught our attention because it is rare for a specific individual video to get called out. Usually viewers have trouble watching all of the videos, or have unpredictable experiences where they can view a video on some occasions and not others. The feedback we were seeing about the Green Witch lecture were different: many people were having trouble only with that video (or sometimes with one or two select others), and it would play well for a period of time and then simply stop.

[WARNING: The next paragraph contains tech geek talk. If you find vivid descriptions of software or data upsetting or boring, please skip to the paragraph that follows it.]

We dug in to the issue. We established that was happening across browsers, and regardless of how good the internet connection was. We reached out directly to the engineering team at DaCast, the company that provides the “under-the-hood” streaming and video hosting technology. We went back and forth for a couple of weeks, testing and talking about file-size and bitrate. Finally, it was someone on their team who happened to glance at the codec and notice something I had missed: the file had been saved as .MP4 but the video codec was MPEG-2V. The embedded browser player we use is designed for the AVC / H.264 codec. I had simply missed it, because the difference in codecs didn’t make the video break completely…. it broke it just enough to be annoying. Live and learn.

What now?

In the next week or two, we will go through all of our videos and confirm that they encoded in the video format they need for you to have the best viewing experience. We will re-code anything that needs to be changed (like The Burning of the Green Witch).

We would also like to say a big thank you to all of our viewers who sent in messages and emails to let us know about this issue. That takes time and energy out of your day. You could have just as easily thrown up your hands and gone on to watch something else. But you were patient, and helped us understand the problem you were experiencing. Because of that, we found a solution. Now, the experience for all our viewers will be better because of your help.

This is a great start to building a fantastic community in 2020 and beyond. Hail Satan.